“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”Aldous Huxley

2016-2017 season

Highlights: GIANNISCHICCHI/L’HEUREESPAGNOL at Opéra national de Lorraine, Gala with Marina Rebeka and Croatian National radio Orchestra in Zagreb, returning to Copenhagen Phil, tour of MADAMEBUTTERFLY in Japan, symphony concerts in Tokyo, Brahms REQUIEM with Aalborg Symphony Orchestra

“Michael Balke transfigured the orchestra of Nancy, reaching very high levels on this occasion. He followed with subtlety the recitatives of the French work (Ravel) and forced the Puccinian harmonic expression to the limits of the possible, fulfilling every imaginable wish one might have.”
(Opéra Actual Magazine, 2016)

“Musical goose bumps!”
(Deutschlandradio, 2015)

”Michael Balke has the piece not only under control, he realized it as a unified whole – thrilling, precise, well thought out. The Magdeburg Philharmonic plays perfectly and sounds fantastic. The Elektra music has – in the relentlessly modern, yet sweet and sensual reading of Michael Balke – downright drug character.
One is exposed to this drug mercilessly. One and three-quarters of an hour. This is like ecstasy. A very impressive performance of orchestra and conductor.”
(MDR Figaro, 2015)

“An outstanding conductor.
We have heard the 35-year-old German conductor Michael Balke in Aarhus when he conducted the concert with tenor Lawrence Brownlee and already back then, we wished that he would return. Now the whole country gets the possibility of enjoying him. On the large scale, he shaped the opera clearly and elegantly, in the interior, he managed to make Puccini’s – also technically wonderful score – alive with many details which you had to enjoy even more.”
(John Christiansen/jcKlassisk, 2014)